Impacts will vary from one burned acre to the next, and urban and wildland areas face different threats to water quality.
Waterways in the valleys to the east will be similarly impacted—especially Sonoma Creek, where a remnant population of endangered steelhead trout still spawns, and the Napa River, habitat for several salmonids, including Chinook salmon, according to Matt St. John, an executive officer of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.
The fallout from the urban destruction will be of a different nature.
Dolman calls the contaminated ashes from the urban fires "enemy No.
"We need to control erosion and keep that toxic ash from being delivered into creeks, especially in areas like Mark West with Coho and steelhead spawning habitat," he says.
Officials with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the California Office of Emergency Services, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the United States Army Corps of Engineers, and other agencies, as well as local organizations and conservation districts, have been collaborating in the response to the fires.
"We want to stabilize the soil but without just throwing out seeds that will become the fuel for next year’s fires," she says.
She says most conventional straw usually contains seeds from grasses—generally non-natives.
As for rain, Cornwall is eager to see it arrive—but not all at once.
This article originally appeared on Water Deeply.